


Mini-Fics - The 100

by Jove_Belle



Category: The 100 (TV), The 100 (TV) RPF
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-01
Updated: 2018-06-01
Packaged: 2019-05-17 00:11:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14821550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jove_Belle/pseuds/Jove_Belle
Summary: What follows is a series of short, unrelated, and unconnected stories. Some are fun for the whole family. Some are pure, unfiltered smut. The rest land somewhere in the middle. Consider yourself warned.Chapter 1 - Love is Weakness (Octavia/Niylah - Rated G)





	Mini-Fics - The 100

**Author's Note:**

> Please note, I do not own The 100, but if I did Lexa sure as hell wouldn't have died in such a ridiculous, contrived way. 
> 
> Also, reviews are love.

The soft, slow curve of Niylah’s body matched the soft, slow curve of her mouth and being with her was just so easy. It didn’t silence the persistent ache deep in Octavia’s chest that craved Lincoln. That fire was dim and flickering, but still there. No matter how much she tried to push it down, to block out the memories, she could never quite snuff out the last vestiges. She wasn’t sure she even wanted to. 

And Niylah never made her choose. She shared what she could, gave freely of her body—something Octavia needed regardless of how much she tried to suppress her body’s demand to be touched—allowed Octavia to take without expecting more, without expecting heart eyes and love. Niylah was generous with her words, her soft encouragement, her steady support. She was easy.

Love was weakness. Of course Octavia knew that. She’d learned it too many times through her life to not grasp the heavy weight of that simple truth.  
First, as a scared little girl, crouching in the dark, praying to an unanswering god that she remain undiscovered without understanding what she’d done that was so bad no one could know about her. 

She’d learned it again as a teen, sobbing in isolation, the cell so much larger than the space under the floor. Rather than the heavy, oppressive blanket she’d grown used to as a child, that time the lesson had assaulted her, careless squashing every ounce of safety she’d carved out for herself.

The ceiling in her cell loomed above her, and the empty space pushed against her in a way the top of her hiding compartment never had. In that room, with the sterile walls, meals that satisfied her hunger rather than leaving her stomach hollow and gnawing, and a bed and pillow all to herself, she’d felt more alone than she ever had under the floor.

The isolation, coupled with the knowledge that her mom, her tether to the world above, now floated, frozen and inanimate, in the darkness of space, all because she’d dared to love Octavia, left her bereft. She’d loved her daughter so fiercely and so completely that she’d valued Octavia’s life above her own. Eventually, that love had killed her.

During the years between being discovered and coming to the ground as one of the hundred, she’d lost Bellamy too. Her big brother. Her protector. He’d been so eager to please her that he’d forgotten the only rule their mom had for Octavia: Stay hidden. Stay out of sight. Stay alive. “It’ll be okay,” he’d promised. And she’d believed him. Not because he was especially believable, despite the sincere glow in his eyes as he’d talked about the dance.

No, she’d believed him because she’d wanted just a taste of the freedom he enjoyed every day. She wanted it so badly that the flavor of it settled around her, a tantalizing aroma in the air that was all but tangible yet completely unattainable. She wanted it so badly that the slightest hint had her leaping and laughing and dancing as though she were a normal girl, one who could wear freedom as a comfortable drape around her shoulders, as though moving beyond her compartment, their living quarters, was something she could take for granted. She’d wanted it so badly that she ignored the danger, the life or death consequences.

Then her mom was gone and Bellamy was…she didn’t actually know where Bellamy was, just that she was completely and utterly alone in an irrevocable, impossible way. All because she’d wanted to dance and a group of adults, the council, said her very existence was such an egregious crime that could only be made right with the ultimate sacrifice: her mom’s life.

On the ground, with Bellamy once again acting as her protector, Octavia discovered the sky, the warmth of the sun on her skin, the smell of life, deep and earthy and enticing. She’d decided then that, despite knowing his intentions were from a good place, she would never again allow anyone to tell her where she could and could not go.

The boundaries, the barriers of steel and glass and endless space were gone. She could sleep anywhere. The walls of the drop ship pushed in on her and made her itch as though her skin was suffocating in the stale, sweaty tang that clung to the air. The tent Bellamy insisted she use wasn’t much better. Even though it was much smaller than the ship, the walls were permeable, and the crisp, clean air could reach her. The oxygen was so rich, so fresh that she made herself light headed if she let herself breathe her fill.

Then came Lincoln. Together, they’d left the drop ship behind. One endless, painful night of torture had been more than enough for both of them. With Lincoln’s solid warmth curled protectively around her, they slept on the cool, damp earth that lined the cave floor. Sometimes they slept out in the open, with only the stars for a blanket. Exposed to the elements and the local fauna, Octavia had felt safe. The freedom filled her with a sense of purpose, a definition of self.  
Confident in a way she’d never been before, she trained until she was lethal and feared by grounders and sky people alike. They’d been surrounded by war, by death, by angry, squabbling children with the deadly intentions, but she’d been happy. She had Lincoln, a sword, and a horse, and that was enough.

Somewhere in that she’d grown too comfortable with the singular truth that wherever she went, Lincoln would also go. And wherever Lincoln went, she would also go. They were intrinsically linked in the minds of others, so much so that one name didn’t sound right without the other. They were no longer Lincoln. Or Octavia. They were Lincoln and Octavia. Or Octavia and Lincoln. One went with the other, without question, without challenge. With Lincoln, Octavia could finally live.  
And again, life taught her the undeniable, inescapable lesson. Love was weakness.

A bitter, angry man, a bullet, and a torrent of rain. That’s all it took to end Lincoln. One second he was there, quietly resolved and defiant. The next, he was slumped on the ground, blood threading out from the wound in his head to stain the puddle of water around him a dull, lifeless pink.

The color was so subdued, a bad match for the finality of the click and boom caused by the simple pull of the trigger. There was no grace of a battle well fought. There was no strength, no honor, and no redemption. The color was too soft, too gentle, a complete counterpoint the violent red that flooded Octavia’s mind and lived inside her, pulsing and throbbing. Eventually, the vivid scarlet dulled and hardened inside her, replacing a heart that once felt everything, too much and too loud, with a hard, invulnerable relic filled with so much malice all she had to offer was vengeance and death. And so she meted it out indiscriminately.

When Octavia lost Lincoln, she lost herself. No longer Octavia and Lincoln, Lincoln and Octavia, she had no idea who she was or how to even begin putting the shards of her soul back together. She tried to find it in the quiet and the soil and hard work, and that had been almost enough. Well, enough that she’d been able to ignore her darker impulses.

Until she couldn’t.

More people died. Too many. But the stench of death and decay had filled her so completely that she barely registered the loss. 

For the second time, her big brother, her protector, was gone. And even that didn’t move her the way it once would have. He took Clarke with him, a girl she hadn’t even really liked. But she’d respected her. Clarke had been a constant, a steadying voice, a decisive leader in Octavia’s life since landing on the ground. She’d been good at making the decisions that swamped Octavia with adrenaline and the inability to think beyond the tactics needed to stay alive one more moment. Clarke was strategic. She thought. She planned. Octavia only reacted, violently, and Octavia missed her, missed letting someone else shoulder the weight of decisions that determined who lived and who died.

Unlike Bellamy, Clarke had left pieces of herself behind. Echoes of her colored the bunker, overlaying the very air. In the way people thought, the way they functioned, the way they inherently whispered about wishing she was there to guide them. In the room assignments, the list of people, the prioritized supplies. In the humanity she tried so hard to suppress but never quite could. In the desperate grief in her mom’s eyes and the soft resigned smile on Niylah’s face.  
Octavia had no idea how to lead, but she knew how to fight and she knew how to protect. So, she’d taken Niylah, a woman who’d helped her, directly and indirectly, too many times to count, and fought for her. Protected her.

Niylah slotted so easily into the tiny spaces, the vulnerable bits of Octavia. She slid in, comforting and still, in a way that silenced Octavia’s fear rather than feeding it. She held Octavia, touched her when she didn’t know she needed it. She gave without demanding anything in return, she let Octavia set the pace, let her determine the timing, the speed, the length and depth of their connection. She was supple and inviting and so fucking patient that Octavia could almost forget the constant edge of discontent, the persistent hunger, the subversive knowledge that the girl under the floor who loved the open sky so very much would likely never see it again. With her touch, Niylah soothed away the bitter irony that came with knowing that, while they’d survived the death wave, they’d damned themselves in the process.

Love was weakness, Octavia knew that. But Niylah wasn’t love, not the way she’d known it with Lincoln. Still, she was there, and she was kind and sweet and gentle and didn’t expect Octavia to be damage proof. And because it wasn’t love, it wasn’t strong enough to make her weak, her feelings for Niylah were everything.

The soft, slow curve of Niylah’s body matched the soft, slow curve of her mouth and being with her was…perfect.


End file.
